A town council in Ukraine had local cell sites removed, leaving the place with almost no mobile communications. The decision was made, following residents’ complaints over health problems and increased number of cancer diagnoses blamed on the equipment.

A group of activists at the town of Yaremche, a ski-resort in Ukraine’s Carpathian mountains, have succeeded in pressuring local authorities into dismantling the cell sites of the town’s two major mobile connection providers – Kyivstar and MTS. Residents claimed the number of cancer cases increased since the equipment was installed at the top of a chimney near a hospital in 2004.

“We sought help from the sanitary and epidemiological service,” said the town’s first deputy head, Yury Bodoryak, as cited by Ukrainian on-line source, Obozrevatel. “They only told us that the radiation was above normal and that was it. But finding ourselves under pressure from the residents we had to make that decision.”

Mobile service providers are now trying to challenge the decision in court.